Within just 25 years, Pakistan—currently home to 245 million people—will be the world’s fifth most populous country, with 367 million inhabitants. And by 2100, it will surge way past the United States to rank fourth worldwide, after India, China and Nigeria, with 487 million.
Official UN projections also show that by the end of this century, this South Asian nuclear power will also surpass Indonesia as the world’s top Muslim nation.
That fact alone should give Rizwan Saeed Sheikh—who half a year ago replaced Masood Khan as Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States—some added clout on Embassy Row.
“Pakistan has contributed beyond its means and gone way out of its way to forge peace, security and stability, not just in our own region but around the world—at a heavy cost that we continue to pay even today. And that’s something the world must recognize,” he said. “We should not be looked at by the United States or any other country from the lens of Afghanistan, India, China or Russia. We deserve our own strategic space.”
Sheikh spoke with The Washington Diplomat on Jan. 28, only eight days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration. His conversation with freelance journalist Adrienne Ross, a former State Department official, was the highlight of our first Ambassador Insider Series event of 2025.
Some 140 business executives, congressional staffers and media representatives gathered at the Embassy of Pakistan to hear the ambassador, who’s been on the job since last August.
At the time of his appointment, Sheikh was serving as Pakistan’s additional foreign secretary for Middle East affairs, and was also overseeing the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) at the Foreign Office. Local sources said Sheikh’s involvement with the SIFC facilitated his close collaboration with Pakistan’s military establishment, which likely contributed to his selection as ambassador.
Sheikh previously worked with the Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and was the OIC secretary-general’s spokesman. He has also taken part in talks with the G-77, the Non-Aligned Movement and the UN in Geneva, where he worked with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Before joining the Foreign Service, Sheikh worked both as a banker and a broadcaster. He was educated at Punjab University in Lahore.
“Trade has been the most stable facet of our bilateral relationship. My foremost priority as ambassador is to expand economic diplomacy and strengthen commercial interactions,” he said, adding that Islamabad hopes to deepen its partnership with Washington “in areas of security, trade, investment, and climate resilience, ensuring a mutually beneficial future for both nations.”
A parliamentary democracy, Pakistan nevertheless has a poor record when it comes to human rights, political violence and protection of free speech. At the same time, this vast country—about twice the size of California—is burdened by soaring poverty, crushing unemployment and extreme vulnerability to the ravages of climate change.
In February 2024, more than 128 million voters went to the polls across Pakistan’s four provinces of Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab and Sindh. Some 18,000 candidates vied for 336 seats in the National Assembly and 748 in the Provincial Assembly.
Shehbaz Sharif, who had served as Pakistan’s prime minister from April 2022 to August 2023, won his old job back by forming a minority government that united his own party, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) with five other parties.
Imran Khan, leader of the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PIT) party, is a leading critic of the current government, accusing Sharif of grabbing power while exacerbating the misery of ordinary Pakistanis who are struggling to make ends meet.
Sheikh acknowledged that “Pakistan certainly does not have a history of consistency of democratic rule.”
“Since 2002, each time elections are held, whoever lost has made allegations. But while there has been a bit of political unrest, vital economic signs have certainly improved, even beyond our own expectations,” he said, noting that inflation fell from 38% in May 2023 to only 4.1% in December 2024.
Not so fast, counters Human Rights Watch.
In its World Report 2025, the New York-based watchdog said that since its rise to power, the Sharif government has perpetuated a longstanding crackdown on free expression and civil society. Among other things, it has intermittently blocked social media platforms such as X, harrassed opposition parties and detained hundreds of activists, some on charges of violence. Journalists faced intimidation and surveillance for perceived criticism of the government, forcing many to resort to self-censorship.
“The space for free expression and dissent in Pakistan under the Sharif government is shrinking at an alarming pace,” said Patricia Gossman, HRW’s associate Asia director. “Pakistani authorities are repeating a decades-long cycle of power grabs and victimization of opponents at the expense of everyone’s human rights.”
Asked about passage of Pakistan’s new Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), Sheikh said the goal was not to curb free speech but rather address misinformation or fake news spread via digital platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. He also said it’s aimed more at online outlets than radio or TV broadcasters.
“We were trained in responsible journalism, which, is perhaps diminishing with the proliferation of social media. That is where the target of this new legislation lies,” Sheikh said. “Let’s see how it unfolds. And it is certainly nor a law that is cast in stone. It will evolve in response to the issues we may face in practice.”
More broadly, Sheikh said Pakistan’s technology sector is “the most promising prospect for us from a futuristic standpoint, not only for us as a nation, but for the world.”
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is “a consequence of Pakistan’s geo-economic significance,” he said, noting his country’s strategic location between China and the six oil-exporting countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Under this initiative, China has promised Pakistan $62 billion in megaprojects like airports, highways, railways, ports and power plants. So far, according to the online China Academy, CPEC has generated $25.4 billion in direct investment, created 236,000 jobs, and helped Pakistan add 510 kilometers of highways, 8,000 megawatts of electricity and 886 km of the national core transmission grid.
“Pakistan is not a battleground between China and United States,” Sheikh said. “Looking at our history, the top two economies of the world would not even be talking to each other today, had it not been for Pakistan in the early ‘70s. So we were the bridge-builder in political terms, and today we could be the bridge-builder in economic terms.”
He added: “We can afford to have good relations with both countries, each having their own attributes. It has never been a binary choice for us, and it will never be.”
Sheikh noted that Pakistan ranks second globally after the United States as a contributor to IT freelancing, and that an IT investment conference in California’s Silicon Valley last November “was not just a one-off event” but the first of a series, with another similar conference set to take place later this year either in Washington or New York.
Pakistan is also a leading exporter of soccer balls and surgical knives. Nearly 70% of the world’s hand-stitched soccer balls come from Sialkot, in Punjab province—a tradition dating back to the British colonial period, Sheikh said. The city, which manufactures for major brands like Adidas, Nike, and Puma, has supplied balls for the last three World Cups and will do so for the 2026 games in Canada, Mexico and the United States.
“And if there’s any surgery being performed anywhere in the world, there’s an overwhelming likelihood that the knife being used is made in Pakistan,” the ambassador added.
Asked how he plans to guide Islamabad’s relations with Washington under the new Trump administration, Sheikh didn’t seem overly concerned—but did say he’d like to see his country admitted back into the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). It helps, he said, that several key lawmakers who opposed GSP+ status for Pakistan did not win re-election last November.
“Pakistan is not immediately likely to be subjected to any tariffs, because we have a good trade with the United States,” said the ambassador, who has met with at least 40 members of Congress since Trump’s election victory. “We are looking at revival of the GSP scheme. Pakistan should have been, or continued to have been, a beneficiary of this kind of an arrangement. We’ll be working with the new administration on all these issues, and hope to overcome any obstacles.”
